Learning Nerd’s Diary #58
Welcome back Learning Nerds!
This week’s diary is focused on three words that are at the heart of learning - growth, transitions and scale. If you’re not sure why the last one made the cut - it’s because for learning to truly be meaningful, it also needs to be shared and for that we need scale!
👀 Sneak peak
Here is what I have in store for you this week -
💭 Learning About Learning: Iterating Cohort Based Courses
🥜 Learning Nugget: Embracing Failure
💥 Coolest Thing I Learnt This Week:
Learning like a software update
Learning Design 3.0
Seeds & growth
🔦 Spotlight: Lessons from the tortoise
Let's jump right in!
💭 Learning About Learning
3 weeks back we at NextLeap kicked-off the third cohort of the Product Designer Fellowship. The fellowship is an 8 week cohort based course - designed to help people transition into this space from different domains. The end goal? Get employed as a digital product designer.
The interesting part? The first and the third cohort look very different from each other. With every cohort, we have tried to double down on things that worked well and iterate on those that didn’t.
As a learning experience designer, my focus has also shifted with every cohort. Here are some things I’ve learnt along with way:
Your learners will evolve
The profile of our learners and their needs have evolved with every cohort. This means as designers, to keep evolving with these changing profiles and making sure the course caters to the learners in that cohort.
Example:
Our third cohort had more working professionals than students. Historically, we knew that managing time for people who are working becomes challenging over 8 weeks. With this cohort, we added more focus on time management, prioritising things happening in the fellowship and clearly marking things mandatory/options to support them. This might seem like not at all connected to what they’re trying to learn, but goes a long way in supporting their learning.
Let outputs direct the curriculum
At NextLeap, we believe in learning by doing. Like all our courses, the Product Designer Fellowship was also designed in a way that learners get a chance to get their hands dirty and create things.
While designing courses, it’s very easy to get into the FOMO game and try to add things that we feel our learners ‘should’ know. Instead, it’s important to focus on what they should be able to do and make changes in the curriculum based on that.
Example:
With the projects produced in our first cohort, we realised that visual design is something that takes time and practice. That led us to change the curriculum and focus more on visual design from the second cohort onwards. We also added an optional 44 day daily UI challenge to help people practice visual design everyday for 44 days. You can check them out here
Problem - Intervention - Measurement
Taking a problem solving lens to learning experience design is really helpful. We follow the following steps while introducing anything new in the fellowship:
Problem: What issue is the learner facing? What all do we know about it? Why is this a problem?
Intervention: How are we solving this?
Measurement: What is the success criteria? What metrics should this intervention move?
Example:
Problem: Learners mostly come from non-design backgrounds and know very little designers. As a result, they are seeking a community to learn with during the fellowship.
Intervention: Introduce smaller groups in a cohort of learners who can hold each other accountable, meet more often and learn together.
Measurement: Adoption of these small groups, Value add of these groups (self reported)
For any learning experience to be relevant, evolution is key!
🥜 Learning Nugget
You can’t learn how to ride a bike without falling down.
Failure is the doorway to learning something new.
💥 Coolest Thing I Learnt this Week
Learning like a software update
Instead of looking at learning like a new app, look at it like a software updates.
They are necessary to keep it relevant and functional.
Learning Design 3.0
We can’t talk about the evolution of learning without talking about the evolution of learning experience designers as well! Here is an amazing article by Dr. Phillippa Hardman on the same. My favourite few lines from the piece -
In a world where content creation & domain expertise is automated & commoditised, the role and value of the human designer becomes increasingly focused on their pedagogical expertise.
Seeds & Growth
One of my favourite quotes of all time -
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”
- Cynthia Occelli
🔦 Spotlight
Remember, growth & speed are different!
Love & Learning
Until we meet next week!
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